Micah Castro Braden // Doctor Watson, I presume (acatalyst) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-06-27 20:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | irene adler, plot: omega, plot: tempus |
Who: Micah and Iris
What: Tending to wounds
Where: The wine merchant's house
When: France, dammit, France.
Warnings: Fevers?
That night, Iris never woke up. She drowsed at first, coming out of a sweating sleep, thin crescents showing white underneath her lashes, but her eyes never came all the way open. She wouldn't lie still, and since her sleep up until this point had been absolutely steady, the tossing was strange. It landed her on her bad arm, so she would automatically roll back with faint chirps of unconscious pain. When her eyes opened, she wasn't totally conscious, she was just there, behind her eyes.
Micah had spent the day after disappearing to the volcanic island pretending he'd just gone downstairs to think, and he'd spent the same amount of time trying to convince himself that it wasn't going to happen again, that at any given moment he might not be dragged away from Iris again. He didn't do a very good job of all that convincing.
That night, he sat by Iris' bedside, watching the sheen of sweat on her skin. She was feverish, and she was tossing and turning, and Micah knew that his worst nightmares were coming true. Infection, in a time without antibiotics or clean water. My boy...
"Shut up," he hissed at the old man in his head. Micah, who was more prone to joviality, laughter and smiles than he was to stress and unmanageable conditions was feeling tightrope tense before any of this France shit started; if Watson didn't shut up, it was likely to push him over the edge.
When Iris opened her eyes, Micah was already bending over her, having been alerted that something was wrong by the small sounds of pain she was making. "Mamita," he said softly, touching the back of his hand to her brow (almost reluctantly). "You're doing better." A lie.
"Micah?" She recognized him, because she tried to shut her eyes again, even though they wouldn't stay closed. Her throat worked as she tried to swallow. "Can I have some water?" It was a croak, and she reached out a blind hand a couple inches in the air toward him without noticing what she was doing. She kept having nightmares about Eliot... Eliot finding things out she didn't want him to know. Leaving when he was sure he wouldn't. She tried to roll again.
He moved close enough for her to touch his face with that seeking hand, even as he reached for the water he had boiled himself on the fire and set on the bedside table for her. "Who else would it be?" he asked her, trying to keep the smile in his voice and the worry out. "Last time I checked, I was the only person stalking you day and night." He moved away from her fingers, and he held out the cup for her. It was mostly empty, so he could hold it to her lips without her having to sit up, but he wanted to give her the option to take it in her hand if she chose to (under supervision, of course).
She got her eyes open and she reached for him when he pulled away, but her hand dropped even before the cup entered her field of vision. "God," she said, trying to speak again, "God, I feel bad. I feel awful." Her head felt like she was trying to push thoughts through cotton. She tried to pull herself up, but she felt dizzy and fell back again. "Uh, feel sick."
He tried to keep the panicked look off his face, and he did a pretty damn good job of it (practice from being a doctor). "You're doing better, mamita. The sweating means the fever's breaking," he said (a lie), and he moved a little closer and help the cup to her lips and tipped it carefully. "Drink. We can't have you getting dehydrated before we get home," he said, the tone in his voice strongly defying the universe from keeping them in this fucking place.
"Don't feel better," she insisted, argumentative the way children are argumentative when they know something to be true. She took what water she could, but it made her feel even sicker so she turned her mouth away. She got her eyes open again, but they weren't focusing on his face correctly. "You said you weren't going to tell him," she said, without warning.
Micah was about to start on a babbling lie about how fevers regulated temperature within the body, which was true, but peppering it with pretty falsehoods that meant Iris was getting better, getting well - but then she mentioned the fact that he wasn't supposed to tell him and Micah's heart dropped. She can come back from hallucinations, my boy, the voice in his head said, and he ignored the hell out of it, because the old man couldn't lie to him about fevers - he'd seen them too many times during the fighting at home, he knew what it meant when they got so high they affected the mind of the sick person.
He put the cup aside, and he put his cool hands on her warm cheeks. "I didn't tell him. He doesn't know," he assured her, though he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about; it was a tactic to keep her calm, nothing more than that, not a word of truth in the admission.
At least she wasn't frantic, or panicked, but she certainly wasn't coherent. She wrapped one fist into the front of his shirt, and she tried to bring her other arm up to do the same but it wouldn't cooperate. Without warning she started to cry and talk at the same time. "You said you wouldn't but he knows, and he wouldn't know if you hadn't told him, and he knows, and he left." Silent tears on flushed cheeks.
He pulled her to him carefully, and his heart sunk even more when he felt how warm she was in his arms. "No, mamita. I didn't tell him anything, and he didn't leave." This had to be about fucking Eliot. Stupid, worthless, fucking Eliot. "I told him to stay away, because I wanted you for myself," he said, because it was the best lie he could come up with at the moment, and excusing Eliot's non-appearance with truth would hardly make her feel better. "I'm sorry, mamita. I'll tell him he can come back in the morning," he said, and he moved back and tipped her chin, looking down into her flushed cheeks. "Entiendes, mamita? I was jealous." That, at least, was true.
She sobbed into his shoulder for a little while, like a child, and finally wore herself breathless with it, clinging still. "He knew anyway, he found out I wanted him to stay and he left." She was trembling, not consistently, but occasionally, unpredictably, hard trembles down her spine that went through her and her arms, up through his hands and into him. "I'm sorry you're jealous," she said, a moment later. Then, sharp on its heels, vulnerable: "I feel sick, Micah."
The bed she was on was no more than a cot, but Micah carefully maneuvered himself until he was sitting against the wall at its back, and he pulled her to him carefully (easily), ensuring her injured arm was away from his body. While he talked, he unrolled the bandage on her arm slowly; every time he unrolled it, he was more and more worried about the red striations leading from the wound which he could do nothing about. "He didn't know. I punched him in the nose, mamita," he said, because she should believe that; Micah liked punching people in the nose. "And you're bella, mamita. I can't help but be jealous." The soft vulnerable declaration of feeling sick made his heart clench. "When I get you home, you'll feel better, Iris. Te lo prometo," he vowed, his voice thick with the promise.
She made soft sounds of protest when he touched her arm, which showed some signs of swelling high up on her arm and the dangerous needle thin red lines. Turning her head into his chest as she had when they first met, she sighed as he spoke. "You lose your temper too easy, honey," she told him, faint, in a way she never had before. She sounded like Red Riding Hood had, a little fond, a little condescending, a little thick, as if her tongue was slow to catch up. She closed her eyes.
He closed his eyes when he saw that swelling had joined the angry red lines, and he took note of how close the lines were to her shoulder, how long he had before he had to make a decision on amputating that arm. My boy, Iris wouldn't want-. He didn't even let the old man finish his thought, because he, Micah, wasn't going to let her die, dammit.
When she spoke, he set to wrapping her arm again. The term of endearment on her lips, paired with the slow, unfamiliar accented sound of her voice, made him smile down at her with unhidden fondness and adoration. "You don't think it's brave and masculine, me punching people in the nose?" he asked, brushing his thumb below her eye when she let them close.
The clouded grays didn't reappear. She just relaxed against him and waited for the sick feeling to go away. Her arm twitched a little under the pressure of the wrapping, but even a tight bind wasn't going to stop the little red lines from creeping higher. She had some time, at least. Time to keep her arm. "I can punch people too. It's not brave when I do it."
"No, it would be adorable when you did it," he said a touch of his regular smile in the response, dimples shallow in his cheeks. "Who was the last person you punched, Iris?"
"Can't remember." She was breathing dry through her throat. "Hit a partner once to make a play. Long time ago. Don't hit people."
The dry breathing panicked him in a way nothing had before that moment, and he called for the wine merchant, who was willing to let Iris have one of the rooms in his house thanks to Micah's help treating his friend. "She'll take that bath now," he said, because the man had offered earlier. "And some blocks of ice from the wine cellar," he added. The damn fever was going down, and it was going down now.
Iris drifted off as Micah spoke over her head. She murmured incoherent things and names in her fevered sleep, but none of it made any sense. Most of them sounded like little mental notes she made to mention something or pick something up, things she was trying to remember at the time that floated around somewhere in her mind to surface in moments like this.
When she drifted off, Micah touched her hair, letting the worry show on his face for the first time since she'd opened her eyes. He carefully slid off the bed, and he helped the merchant with the cold water for the bath. The ice cubes, which were huge chunks of frozen over water (which was certainly contaminated) were dumped into the already cold water, and he waited until the temperature was biting enough throughout to lower a dangerously high fever.
He asked the merchant to find him lemons, which the merchant explained only the aristocracy had access to, and Micah cursed under his breath. "Fine, wine then. The distillate, not the drinking kind. And a set of dry clothes for her."
He moved back to the bed, and he picked Iris up gently. He'd just have to keep her arm out of the water.
She woke up again when he moved her--in a way. She opened her eyes once to see who it was, and then shut them again once she knew she didn't have to fight the embrace. "Micah," she said, at the end of a sigh. "Are we going to Peter's beach? I always end up there when I get hurt." She couldn't figure out which nightmare she was in, they kept changing.
He held her cradled in the safety of his arms a moment, and he tried to decide how much of what he was saying she would understand. She remembered his name, and she remembered the dreams that Pedro had recently lent clarity to (though he didn't remember the dreams himself), and so he decided to risk explaining things to her, even if it was in the most basic of ways. "You have a fever, Iris, and we need to get it down. The tub is going to be very, very cold, but it's important that you stay in it for a few minutes, alright, mamita?" He didn't wait before adding. "With your clothes on. I'm getting you a dry set for after."
"Fever," she repeated, still without opening her eyes. She shifted a little so that she was cradling her arm, which obviously hurt her. "Yes, I'm hot. Feel sick." Then, squinting a little as if out of half sleep, "I can get better clothes later." The next day was always about finding someone to get her better... or maybe someone else's money. She didn't clarify.
He waited a minute, wishing he didn't have to shock her with the frigid cold of the water, and then he very slow lowered her down to the tub (which was nothing more than a large, metal bucket). "Ready?" he asked, when the water lapped at his elbows.
"It's cold," she said, pointlessly, eyes opening all the way. The sharp gray was nothing more than a vague ring of tarnished steel around wide pupils, and her forehead gleamed. She made a sound of distaste as the cold water soaked her clothing and then shivered as it touched her skin. "It's not supposed to be this cold." It came out more as a mild observation.
"It needs to be cold to shock the fever, mamita. On the count of three," he said, and then he set his jaw and he started counting. On three, he leaned forward and placed her in the freezing water; just her torso, his own arms holding her still if she struggled. Just a minute, that would help, just a minute.
She shrieked, a sharp, earsplitting sound of absolute panic before she got a grip on his collar with her good hand and tried to haul herself back out of the water, which was arctic cold and made it through the vague fever dreams.
He held her there for a full sixty seconds, despite the earsplitting scream which he'd told the wine merchant to expect, despite her thrashing and despite the fat tears that were running down his own face. "Un pocito mas, mamita," he told her over and over.
When she found she couldn't haul herself out, and that the struggling did no good, she shut her eyes hard against the cold shudders from the melting and vaguely foul-smelling water. She stopped struggling and went still except for the shivering, expression still frozen in hardened, even expectant panic. When he spoke she recognized his voice and looked sharply up, hopeful.
He pulled her out within a minute, though it felt like the longest minute of his life, and he held her freezing body against his chest as he stood. "Do you want me to get the merchant's wife?" he asked, because getting her out of those clothes was the immediately priority now. He figured she would panic it if he did it himself, and he didn't want to lose time.
She didn't understand the question, because she didn't answer. The dazed but still trusting gaze shut away, and she curled against his chest again, shivering but otherwise silent.
He shoved the items off the bedside table, and he sat her down on it, letting her lean her weight entirely against his chest (he didn't want to soak the cot through. He started on her shirt, his fingers shaking, but his gaze on her face and not her body. The touch was medical, immediate, necessary. "I'm having them dry a new set of sheets on the line. I had them boil them in wine, which seemed a little better than water," he explained, intentionally babbling to keep her at ease as he worked.
"Wine?" it was more of an echo than a question, because judging from her breathing and the lack of movement behind her eyes, she was largely incoherent. She didn't fight him or even respond as he removed her clothing, and she kept shivering.
He slipped the new, simple dress on her, and then he tore one sleeve completely off so he could tend the wound with boiling water the wine merchant's wife brought up with the clean bedding. He did everything quickly, ignoring the worry in his chest and the very not-masculine dampness on his cheeks. Once the cot was ready, he lifted her and he gently settled her on it, wishing for a warmer fire, and wishing for antibiotics, and wishing for Eliot (who might at least make her feel better).
Micah sat beside her, and he held her hand, watching her breath rise and fall, watching every flutter of her eyelids and listening to every sound and whimper she made. And as the night darkened, he lowered his head to her stomach, and he prayed.